The former Burlington mayor turned congressman turned senator is up for reelection next year for a third term in the Senate. Minutes after energizing Democratic activists packed into an American Legion hall, Sanders dismissed any suggestion he’d run for his own seat as a Democrat next year.

“I am an independent and I have always run in Vermont as an independent, while I caucus with the Democrats in the United States Senate. That’s what I’ve been doing for a long time and that’s what I’ll continue to do,” Sanders said in the interview.

Some in the Democratic Party, including many Hillary Clinton supporters in 2016, questioned Sanders’ loyalty to the party’s causes because he runs as an independent. Sanders says he self-identifies as a democratic socialist. Clinton’s book, “What Happened,” included this barb about Sanders’ political allegiances:

[Sanders] certainly shared my horror at the thought of Donald Trump becoming President, and I appreciated that he campaigned for me in the general election. But he isn’t a Democrat—that’s not a smear, that’s what he says. He didn’t get into the race to make sure a Democrat won the White House, he got in to disrupt the Democratic Party.

…

I am proud to be a Democrat and I wish Bernie were, too.

On Friday, Democrats gathered at the Democratic National Committee’s annual fall meeting voted down a resolution that would have forced Sanders and fellow Senate independent Angus King of Maine to run as Democrats.

Should Sanders decide to run for president again in 2020 under the Democratic Party’s banner, he could have more than a few vocal Democrats continuing Clinton’s party loyalty attacks along the way.